He was not in control of his own body, that much was obvious. Amidst the push and pull of the water, he was sinking. Falling deeper into the water of the Black Lake. His head throbbed in a way he'd never experienced.
In distant flashes of memory, almost as if they weren't his own, he remembered a searing pain above his eye, and someone pulling him toward the water. He remembered the feeling of his body dragging against grass and small stones cutting into his skin.
Underneath all this water, he couldn't help but think his magic was against him. That it had been this entire time. It couldn't protect him, and it couldn't save him. Not from drowning. He would die because he couldn't control the magic inside him. Because he couldn't fight back.
He couldn't see through the rippling on the surface of the water above him. He used his arms and legs to propel himself upward, but with each stroke, a new wave of water crashed down on him. The surface of the lake became a concrete slab that encased him. His muscles tensed.
He didn't want to die. Not now. He wasn't ready. He prayed to whatever god stood in heaven, to whoever was willing to listen. But it seemed no one was. He'd just have to save himself.
He worked to press his lips together and keep the water out, but as time passed and the tide didn't cease, his body became limp and tired, and it took the breath it needed, craving oxygen but letting the cold water flood his mouth and infiltrate his lungs instead. Throat burning and temples aching, he tried one last time to pull himself up to the surface, with every muscle in his body burning. The pressure mounted in his head and he couldn't tell up from down.
Another wave hit the surface of the water, tugging at his clothes and dragging his body through the water slowly. The water slowly became darker and darker, until he was lost in the blackness.
*
The party was too loud, and either the music or the alcohol had left her ears buzzing. Or maybe it was a combination of the two. It was hard to tell at that moment. The night sky was clear, stars hidden beneath the dark blanket of the night sky. It was a nice escape. A breeze swept her hair across her face, caressed her cheeks with gentle fingers.
Her vision was fuzzy at the edges, so she tried to focus on something in the distance. That was when she saw it. Something, resting against the rocks at the edge of the lake. She moved closer, taking careful steps. The water was peaceful, gentle, washing over rocks.
Someone, not something. Oh, god. Holy shit. She let out an involuntary scream and scrambled back toward the party, in an attempt to get as far away as she could from the nightmare that lay behind her.
Limbs bent in strange ways, thrown onto the hard surface of the rock. It was a student, and they were dead.
*
Sapphire Gracen knew something was wrong when she saw Flair's phone cracked on the floor. Flair was never far from her phone.
But when the piercing scream hit her ears and echoed through the room, she knew it was worse than she'd thought. A lot worse. The kind of worse that there was no returning from.
It became harder for her to convince herself that Flair had just drank too much, or that she hadn't realised she'd dropped her phone. But then there was the fact that they'd checked every room, and neither Flair nor Arlo were in the house.
She's with Arlo and they're okay. She is. They both are.
It became harder for her to convince herself everything was okay, because nothing was. And things were only getting worse. There was a sudden and deafening silence as a girl — wet from the rain — walked inside through the glass door. Lightning lit up the sky with brilliant white light, making the trees in the forest look like shadows and the embodiment of wickedness.
"They're d-dead, someone's dead."
There was a shrill ringing in Sapphire's ears and the next few moments blurred together. She followed the girl outside, letting the crowd carry her toward the Black Lake. She took deep breaths and listened to the sound of her heart beating rather than the crying and screaming of students around her in the black of night. She focused on the sound of wild animals in the woods, the fresh smell of the air, and the pine-scented breeze that washed over her face, rather than the sirens blaring. Anything but the sirens. But she couldn't seem to block the sound out.
She crossed her arms over herself, in an attempt to fight off the cold air around her. As she drew nearer to where the crowd was concentrated, closer to the lake, everyone's breaths left their mouths as a misty vapour. She changed her focus to the twigs snapping under her feet. No matter what sound she tried to focus on entirely, she couldn't seem to block out the lights flashing red and blue and red and blue and the sobbing she hears at the front of the crowd. Raw and empty and mournful. The colours wouldn't fade even when she closed her eyes. She was sure they were burned on her eyelids like a branding.
Someone was dead. She wondered if she knew them. She'd never known someone that had died.
The taste of rainwater, the blur of the rain in her eyes, and the whispers all around flooded her senses. She tried — without success — to decipher whether what she was hearing were thoughts or words that had been said aloud. She could usually tell the difference, but with the ringing in her ears and the lights flashing, these were no normal circumstances.
"He's dead."
"He was meeting someone out here."
Must be a suicide.
"Heard he hit his head on a rock and drowned."
As she pushed further into the crowd and closer to the front, she realised the person whimpering at the front of the crowd was Flair. She released a heavy breath, relief washing over her in waves. But, it was a Flair she had yet to see. Not the composed, clear-minded Flair — not her best friend. This Flair had red eyes, mascara streaks down her cheeks and her golden hair in knots. She didn't know this Flair.
Her eyes moved from Flair to the crowd behind her, searching the crowd for Arlo's face. She could see Ayden in the crowd on her left, their eyes locked and her heart thundered louder than the storm around her. She shrugged in a silent question. He shook his head in reply.
Her eyes moved to the lump on the floor, flashing faint shades of red and blue. But even when the lights stop flashing, in that split second, it still remained a tainted mix of deep red and pale blue. Her heart wasn't thundering, and she wasn't sure it was pumping at all. Blood seemed to slow down in her veins. A clot ran through a valve in her heart and she was slowly shutting down. That was it. This death felt too peaceful.
She could barely see anything in the darkness of the night, but she was sure she could see white material on the heap, and a dark red patch tainting the white. Sapphire realised two things all at once: one, that the white material was a shirt, and two, that she knew the person wearing the shirt. That moment was when she was sure the clot had killed her.
Her eyes stung and she felt a pressure build in her temples, pressing in on her brain. The pressure rose, the pain mounted. Like rose bushes bloomed in amongst the ever-dying tissues of her brain. The blood that rushed to her head was the water that fed the toxic flowers, the ones that threatened to be the end of her. The surrounding tissues crumbled into blackness and dissolved into the burning acid of her thoughts. The stalks are wrapping themselves around her neck, the thorns sharpening as each painful second passes. It was still too peaceful a death.
A man in navy tried to get everyone to move further back, but everyone had already seen. She'd seen it, and she was sure it was something out of a nightmare she hadn't yet dreamt up. Was that what it was? A nightmare? Would she wake up from it all? The urge to throw up hit her in the gut. And to her utter dismay, she didn't wake up.
Her stomach twisted, and it felt like something was trying to claw its way out of her abdomen. Slashing and clawing at the inner walls of her stomach and then her intestines, sinking its teeth into her flesh and tissues and muscles, slashing blindly with unforgiving strokes. She could almost feel the scarlet pooling in the bottom of her stomach.
Tears fell and rolled down her cheeks, leaving streaks down her neck. Hot tears on cold flesh. Everything went quiet. The noise of the crowd around her became nothing but a deep hiss. No sirens, or crying, or screaming. People were still whispering, crying, and gasping, but she couldn't hear them. Time seemed to slow and the world spun. She couldn't hear anything. Not a single thing. Not even the dull thump of the heart buried deep in her empty chest. Was that shredded, too?
She thought she'd passed out, but realised she was still standing. Her legs ached, and they began to feel like they might collapse beneath her. She'd be left on the grass beside the body. The ground looked welcoming as the world spun around her. Faces became blurs of colours and the red and blue lights hurt her eyes. Her eyes burned as her cheeks became wet with tears and rain.
She wished she hadn't found Arlo, and she wished she'd stayed inside. She wished none of them had gone to the party, and she wished she could hold them all in her arms and never let go. But it was too late for that. She wanted to scream but couldn't seem to find a voice within the depths of her raw throat.
What she found wasn't the Arlo she remembered, or wanted to remember. This other Arlo was sprawled across the grass, with blood running down a jagged wound above his eye, his skin sickly pale, his blue eyes open and empty of all light. The whites of his eyes didn't seem so white anymore. Now, with his lips in a straight line, Sapphire wished with everything she had he'd smirk, or grin, or anything. She wished he'd move and tell her this was a cruel joke and that he was okay. But he didn't move, and he wasn't okay. He wasn't going to be okay ever again.
Sapphire paled to a creamy shade of white when she noticed the blood on his arm. Curling lines drawn on skin. The blood fell from deep cuts and the cuts formed words. Her breathing ceased for a moment as she read the words engraved in his skin.
P-R-E-T-T-Y
A-S
A
C-O-R-P-S-E
T-O-O
She moved closer to Flair and wrapped her arms around her. Flair rested her head on Sapphire's shoulder. A loud, ugly sob tore through Flair's throat and Sapphire felt the tears wrack her friend's body. She could feel Flair's tears wet her shoulders, and then the tears become abundant. The tears were warm in comparison to the cold drops of rain that pounded against every inch of Sapphire's exposed skin. The cold she'd felt earlier forgotten, she didn't consider going inside or even leaving where she sat beside the body of Arlo Torres. She didn't ever want to leave him.
The rain hit her skin, hitting her harder as Flair's crying became more violent and her body began to feel as if it was convulsing.
She could hear her friend's haggard whispering. "No... No... N-no..."
Kole was standing at the front of the crowd, with hunched shoulders and wide, glassy eyes. Sapphire wished he'd leave, because he didn't need to see Arlo like this. Arlo shouldn't be remembered as this shell of a person that once was.
She could almost laugh at the horror of it all. A murder at Belreistkov. The sick part of her knew the headlines would write themselves.
She thought about how she'd seen Arlo only a few hours ago. She remembered how he smiled at her, showing all his teeth like a child would. When he was alive, her brain seemed to whisper venomously, and she wondered when her own body began to turn against her. Reality only really hit her now, and it hit her all at once, like an injury to the head, the dying of a cell, and the eventual withering of a rose.
Arlo — one of her best friends, who was gentle, who was still trying to figure out who he was, who thought he was alone until he met them — was gone.